It wasn’t easy, but New Orleans jazz pianist and patriarch Ellis Marsalis managed to cram a few words in edgewise as the annual Duke Ellington Jazz Festival drew to an exuberant close at the Kennedy Center Concert Hall on Monday night. Read more »

I know it was Branford Marsalis’ show tonight at the Flynn Center, but I couldn’t help but focus on his 18-year-old drummer Justin Faulkner after learning about the soon-to-graduate high-schooler at their Meet the Artist session a few hours earlier (see previous blog entry). This is no novelty act - the kid is impressive. He moves deftly from two-handed shuffle to a fuller, funkier beat, and delivered a couple of solos that rocked the house. When Marsalis wasn’t playing his saxophone and stood behind his three fellow musicians to watch and listen (which was often - he relishes sharing the load) he would bob his head to the rhythm and in approval of what Faulkner, pianist Joey Calderazzo and bass player Eric Revis were doing (Calderazzo, by the way, had a gorgeous piano solo on a beautiful tune he wrote called “The Blossom of Parting”; you can see all four band members in this fine photo from tonight by Free Press staffer Glenn Russell).Read more »